Page 15 of Crimson Oath (The Firebird and the Wolf #2)

She couldn’t stop the laugh. “You’re such an asshole.”

“He would be bored if I became too cooperative.” Oleg’s voice softened. “It is good to hear laughter. We do not laugh as much since Elene died.”

Tatyana’s smile fell. “How is her family?”

“Devastated.” His voice was rough. “I speak to her daughter regularly. She is my goddaughter; it’s my responsibility to take care of her. Elene’s son and her husband want nothing to do with me.”

It was good to speak about someone that Tatyana had considered a friend. Someone she’d hoped would be a mentor.

“I envied her life,” she admitted. “I wanted to be her. Successful professionally. Respected like that. To have a family and a husband.” Tatyana shook her head. “She had everything.”

Oleg stopped walking, and Tatyana turned to look at him.

“What?”

“You can still have those things.” He frowned a little bit. “You’ve seen very little of vampire life so far, and you’re not in a… typical vampire court.”

She huffed out a breath. “So the vampires in your organization live quiet lives, do they? Get married. Settle down. Only pick up the battle-ax Monday through Friday?”

“No.” He smiled. “The men and women of my druzhina live warriors’ lives. Some of them are mated, but they usually do not have families. ”

“So what Elene had is not?—”

“But one of my daughters in Minsk adopted two children last year with her human partner.” Oleg sighed and started walking again. “I would prefer that they married in the church, but Polina said it is not necessary, and I am trying to be understanding of her modern ways.”

“What?” Tatyana could only blink. Oleg sounded so… conventional. So paternal. “She has human children?”

Oleg turned and kept his voice low. “I trust you to keep that information to yourself. Please recognize that their lives are precious to all in my clan, but their mortal nature puts them at increased risk from my enemies.”

“I would never” —she shook her head— “I would never tell anyone.”

“Thank you.” He continued walking, cocking out his elbow and waiting for her.

Tentatively, Tatyana put her arm in his. “She’s your daughter?”

“For four hundred years now, yes. A brilliant businesswoman and a very fair-minded governor. She overseas my territory in what is called Belarus now. The borders are different than when I conquered it, because of humans. But it’s in that region.”

“I didn’t know.”

She’d known Oleg’s vampire brother was in charge of the area around Sochi and Crimea where her mother lived. She supposed it made sense that one man couldn’t rule a vast empire without overseers of some kind.

“All I am saying,” Oleg continued, “is that most immortal organizations are much like human governments. Yes, there are martial wings of every court—every king must have an army—but much of the day-to-day business of what I do is mundane. We make money. We invest. We build factories and create jobs.”

Tatyana was swiftly shifting pieces of knowledge in her mind. “I remember seeing some payroll accounts when I worked for Zara, but I thought it was all… ”

“A front?” Oleg smiled. “For our nefarious operations?” He chuckled a little bit. “No, it is all real. One of my companies is a leading manufacturer of agricultural equipment in Europe and Central Asia.”

What Oleg was describing sounded much more like a modern multinational corporation than a criminal organization. “People will always need to eat.”

Oleg grunted. “Yes, and wise immortals understand that the health of humanity directly affects our well-being.”

Vampires, of course, also needed to eat.

“Over the centuries, I have made many things,” Oleg said. “I like being productive. My sire enjoyed making war, and I have waged war when it was necessary, but war is wasteful. I avoid it when I can.”

“I wish human governments understood that better.”

“Hmm.” Oleg shrugged. “Whether at war or peace, farming is a good industry. Plows and harvesters feed soldiers and civilians alike.”

“One of Zara’s companies was a greenhouse manufacturer.” Tatyana remembered some of the accounts. “At the time I thought that was normal, but after I knew what she was, it seemed strange.”

“She had greenhouses for many reasons,” Oleg said. “Some of them legitimate.” He pressed her hand into his side. “So you see, even my juvenile and unstable daughter employed many people. Including you when you were human.”

“Until she stopped paying me.”

“Imagine if she hadn’t.” The corner of his mouth turned up. “We would never have met if she’d just paid her bills.”

“Oleg—”

“I can’t regret it,” he said quietly. Oleg stopped at the apex of a bright red pedestrian bridge that looked over the water and stared down at her, her arm still locked with his. “Can you blame me?”

His eyes were soft, and with her enhanced vision, the night took on a luminescent grey quality that looked more like twilight than darkness .

For a moment he looked like just a man. A warm man who smelled of cedar cologne, holding her arm safe in his.

Tatyana’s eyes fell to his lips, full and curved in pleasure.

She reached up and touched his beard, scratching her fingernails along the edge of his jaw as a low hum came from his chest.

He leaned down, angling his head toward hers, but a moment before their lips touched, he paused. “May I kiss you?”

She should say no. “Yes.”

His mouth was a revelation. Soft and searching, he coaxed her lips open, and when his tongue touched hers, she felt human again, and every inch of her body heated.

They were in the middle of a park, but it was nearly three in the morning. She inhaled the scent of his skin, and for a moment she forgot everything else.

He was a man; she was a woman.

It was a kiss, and it felt like the first time she had ever been kissed. The gentleness was nearly painful. Her eyes were closed when Oleg pulled his mouth away.

“How could I regret anything?” he said softly. “You are becoming an extraordinary vampire.”

Vampire.

The spell broken, Tatyana opened her eyes and saw Oleg’s fangs extended, long and sharp in the bright moonlight. She felt, more than saw, his power whirling around him.

Her blood pulled her back to him. She felt a burst of swirling anger, need, lust, and desperate longing that burned in her throat. She wanted to sink her fangs into his neck and pull the life from him until he was on his knees and begging.

Tatyana cringed at the image and took a step back.

“Tatyana?”

Bitterness stained her tongue. “You may not regret that I was kidnapped, beaten, and basically killed, but I never wanted to be a vampire. ”

His chin lifted and he stepped back. “But you are . You might as well make the best of it.”

He held out his hand, but she ignored it and kept walking down the arch of the bridge and back to the pedestrian path.

Make the best of it?

Tatyana swallowed her anger and tried not to fume.

Too bad. So sad.

Sorry that you lost your ability to walk in sunlight, have a family, and live a normal life where you don’t have to drink blood every other night to keep from being a ravenous monster, but can’t you just make the best of it?

It could be worse!

It could always be worse. Her mother never passed up an opportunity to remind her of that.

Oleg took long strides and caught up with her, following her up the path, across a street, and toward another set of apartment buildings that hugged the riverbank.

They were walking in silence, away from the tourist areas and toward the tree-lined riverwalk. Streetlights were getting farther apart, and the sound of traffic dimmed in the distance.

The moon was high, and lights in the apartments were scattered as human families slept.

“Tatyana, I think we should?—”

“I want to go back to the bar and find Samson.”

She was ready to leave.

She and Oleg weren’t at each other’s throats. Maybe now that he knew she wasn’t obsessed with him—though the kiss was regrettable—and she knew that he wasn’t going to track her down for taking Zara’s gold, they could simply go their separate ways.

He could live his blood-soaked vampire existence being an undead emperor to thousands, and she could try to carve out a corner of eternity that didn’t suck out her soul.

That was all she wanted. A little bit of peace. A space that felt like home. Safety for her mother .

“They’re going to try to rob us.”

Tatyana stopped and turned when Oleg spoke. “What?”

He stood still, hands in his coat pockets, and nodded at a clutch of dark-clad men who had broken away from the shadows under a tree and were lurching in their direction. “They think we’re lost tourists.”

She hadn’t even noticed them, lost in her thoughts and fuming at the silent vampire beside her. “Oh good. Another excuse for you to rip some heads off.”

He shrugged. “If they irritate me or threaten you?—”

“As you very recently reminded me, I’m not human anymore.” She glared at him from the side. “Just wait here and let me talk to them.”

“You?” He had the gall to look amused. “You’re going to talk to them. Excellent. I hope they don’t have knives. Let me know when you would like my company, little wolf.”

Tatyana stalked over to the boys, most of whom looked like teenagers, and snarled, “Where the fuck are your mothers?”

The young man in the front of the pack froze.

“Well?” Tatyana continued. “Where are they?”

The young man in the front of the pack looked confused. “We… what?”

He answered her in Georgian, but Tatyana responded in Russian, in the best attempt at grandmotherly shame she could manage.

“Do they know you’re out so late?” She pointed at the apartment buildings behind them.

“Is that where you live?” She looked at one of the boys, who looked barely old enough to pee standing up. “You! What is your mother’s name?”

“Uh…” He stammered. “M-Marie. Her name is?—”

“Shut up, Georgi.”

“Oh!” Tatyana kept going. “So I should walk back and start pounding on doors and asking Marie why Georgi is harassing people out for a walk at night, yes?”

“Fuck you, bitch.” The words might have come from the tallest boy in the group, but his voice was wavering. Just a little bit. Nevertheless, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a knife. “You’re crazy. So shut up and give me your?—”

Faster than the knife could rise, she darted over to him, yanked the blade from his hand, twisted his wrist, and gripped the boy’s throat in her hand, slamming him to the ground before she turned to the biggest one, who had barely had time to react.

She grabbed his ear, pulled him down to her face, and hissed in his ear. “Go. Home.” She flooded his skin with amnis as she spoke and watched his pupils go wide. “Go home and apologize to your mother for being a bad son.”

The boys were scuffling in the long grass around their friend on the ground, stunned by Tatyana’s sudden attack and the limp way their ringleader drooped in her arms.

She let him drop to the ground before she turned to them and spoke quietly. “All of you go home and apologize to your mothers for being shameful, irresponsible little fucks who don’t have jobs and aren’t in school.”

They said nothing, but they picked up their friends and shuffled back into the shadows of the trees along the riverbank. Moments later, Tatyana heard them start to run.

Oleg wandered over, his hands still in his pockets and an amused expression on his face. “I’ve never thought about using maternal guilt to deal with humans. Unexpectedly effective. Should I call for a car?”

“They were dumb little boys.” She turned to him. “I knew plenty of them at home. You would have ripped their heads off and killed them.”

Tatyana felt a pang in her chest when she realized that half those boys she’d grown up with were probably dead already. Bombing. War. Crime. All of them could kill as easily as a vampire.

The world was filled with monsters, and now she was one of them.

“I probably would have only needed to kill the ringleader.” Oleg stared into the darkness. “But I did not need to.” He looked at her. “ See? I told you that you’re going to make an extraordinary vampire.”

The following night, Tatyana woke on Arosh’s mountain with Oleg’s scent still clinging to her skin. She washed her face, put on clothes that would be acceptable for court, then walked through her door, heading toward a room in the furthest corner of the compound.

Two sharp raps later, the Poshani human named Sibella opened the door, narrowing her eyes when she saw Tatyana.

“It’s only been a few days. You can’t feed from me again, and I told you I’m not interested in anything else with you.”

“I don’t want sex or blood from you.” Nevertheless, Tatyana pushed her way into the room and pulled out a thick roll of US dollars she kept stashed in her room. “But I do have a proposition.”